


Ghosts on Endor

by ilyena_sylph, Merfilly



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars: Rebels, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, Grief/Mourning, Spoilers, Twilight of the Apprentice
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-01
Updated: 2016-04-01
Packaged: 2018-05-30 14:12:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,315
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6427147
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ilyena_sylph/pseuds/ilyena_sylph, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Merfilly/pseuds/Merfilly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Death Star is gone, the Emperor should be dead, and now Rex wants to know if Vader is the next target, unable to hope he was up in that fight. He couldn't get that lucky, right? Then he meets the new Skywalker, and gets to talk it out.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ghosts on Endor

**Author's Note:**

> Works off the worst assumption from Rebels Season Two finale. 
> 
> Based on: http://kickfliptano.tumblr.com/post/141994085342/worriedaboutmyfern-excellent (Matching of Rex from Rebels to a participant in Return's strikeforce)
> 
> Plays fast and loose with canon and speculation.

There were too many complicated feelings tied up in Rex's gut over the fireball and sparking metors up above them. On the one hand, with the briefing that had said the Emperor was to be aboard, there was a good, solid chance the slimy piece of kriffing bantha fodder should finally be dead. On the other, that might just make it all worse, depending on just where the _other_ Sith Lord had been.

It pained him, even this many years later, that if Vader wasn't part of that little fireball up there, the Rebellion was probably in for worse than ever. He wondered if he could actually get close enough to the Princess or one of the smuggler-generals to ask about the future of the Rebellion. Surely one of them would drop the info on where they were going next, and that would help put Rex's fears to rest.

How long had Rex been fighting now? Twenty-five… no, twenty-six years. And yet, he knew if he didn't hear the answer he needed to, he would not stop. He couldn't. His brothers, all the generals, the commanders from the lower ranks -- _Ahsoka_! -- weighed on his soul, calling to him to keep fighting where they had fallen and failed. Rex was surprised he'd made it this far, and yet he believed in the Force. Surely the Force would grant him this one mercy after taking everything else. He had to know that the foul Sith called Vader was dead before he could lay down the fight.

That was the most personal part of his burden. His loyalty had been bent, twisted, and nearly destroyed. Yet there was a tiny piece of Rex's soul that wanted Anakin Skywalker, the Republic's Hero With No Fear, to have been as much a victim as his brethren had been. In putting Vader down, Rex hoped to set Anakin free at last.

Maybe that would buy Rex peace from his nightmares surrounding all the fallen he had outlived.

He spotted the princess… and she wasn't moving away from Solo. At all. Rex half-smiled, better memories of campaign ends coming to mind. How many of his brothers had dumped regs by the wayside, to find comfort? How many times had Rex given --

\-- he cut that thought off. He had to learn where the next fight was, not fall into the grief cycle again. He scanned around, looking for the other smuggler, Calrissian. He always felt more at ease dealing with people that hadn't been straight up Republic. He avoided the ones like Rieeken, who might see past the beard and spot the tattletale features, or hear it in his voice. No one who'd lived through Order 66 and those chaotic weeks around it needed to be reminded of a Clone.

Rex didn't need to be reminded he was one of only a handful of those original fighters for the Republic, possibly -- probably -- the only one that had escaped without murdering his own superior officer.

//Then again, he was busy killing the babies,// cut through his soul, forcefully reminding him of his mission, and his heart fought back. //Not the general. Whatever that slime made him into, however he did it!//

It only made sense to Rex, having seen the aftermath of his brothers destroying the very leaders who had bled for them, held them as safe as they could, leading always from the front… Anakin Skywalker had fallen to treachery from the Emperor. From the Sith. He spit to the side at the memory of that treacherous man, muttering a faint Mandalorian curse under his breath. 

Calrissian was up there with the Wookie and Antilles and Nien Nunb… and an entirely too-familiar astromech shape, in the company of a protocol droid? No, Rex wasn't going near that group with his own ghosts on him so hard. Probably wasn't the pair he'd known, but the Wookie might well notice something about him being a Clone, and that would get difficult.

Rex had spent so much of the Rebellion avoiding those who could identify him as what he was, not out of fear, but for a burning need to avenge all of his brethren. Tempers flared too hot when Clones were mentioned anywhere near the few people in the galaxy that still carried the legends of the Jedi.

No one wanted to know they'd been betrayed just as much by Order 66 as the Jedi themselves.

Maybe he'd have to let the party die down before he'd get anywhere, much as it galled him to have to wait. Frustrated, he wound up wandering along the lower trails of the village, avoiding merry-makers until he was outside the lights.

He wasn't anticipating running into Commander Skywalker, hero of the Battle of Yavin. Rex had glimpsed him on the transport down, but not really been able to indulge his curiosity over the name. Was it really someone out of his General's line? How? Maybe it was just a coincidence. Now, though, as the man in all black came walking toward the gangways, his shoulders bowed with grief that seemed unending, Rex had to consider the chance it wasn't.

More, there was a lightsaber on that hip, and the former Republic commander felt his chest grow so tight, bound up in old feelings all over again. He tried to dodge out of the way, but he'd never been quick enough to dodge his general, not when Skywalker's face looked like that. 

Every inch of Luke's body hurt, he was fairly certain that most of his hair was standing on end, and the press of jubilance all around him... that hurt too, just... differently. He should have been able to join in that joy. The Emperor was dead, the Imperial fleet had scattered into hyperspace in multiple directions, the Rebellion was saved and had a chance of winning now. 

And his father was dead. 

His Father had chosen to save him, and had died, and the ache of that numbed everything else. He'd wanted a little while to settle himself, to steady, before he saw even Leia again. He hadn't expected to run into anyone else down here, almost on the surface. He thought he vaguely recognized the man from the transport down, and he paused. This man was almost Ben's age, if he had any guess, and... there was a sadness in his eyes, his mouth below the beard, that paused Luke in his tracks. 

"Hello?" 

"Pardon me, Gen… Commander Skywalker," Rex said, moving aside as he struggled with words that wished to escape him. 

Was the name true? Did he carry that lightsaber in honor? Would he be prey to the Dark Side? He forced his eyes away from that face, the one that looked to be almost the same age of his General, before the Great Betrayal.

What had that half-said word been? 'Gen'... 'General'? Why would anyone think he had that kind of rank? 

Luke blinked as the man shifted out of his way, and something -- he could feel questions, concern, an overpowering, agonized ache in him... "It's all right," he answered, shaking his head slightly, looking at him. "I'm... not really headed anywhere, anyway. 

"You came down with us, didn't you? Why are you... all alone now?" 

Those words… Rex felt every single pain of losing brothers, losing his way of life, his… everything. He was alone, and there was nothing for him but making sure Vader didn't live longer than absolutely necessary.

"Loner, sir, like a lot of Rebels with nothing but the Rebellion itself," he answered honestly, trying to cycle his grief down, his anger, so that this kid with a lightsaber didn't pull off some Jedi trick by accident. It wasn't like anyone was really left to teach him, after all.

Luke nodded a little. That... he did understand that, and he'd just opened his mouth to say so when a flash of black helm and lenses slapped across his mind, along with another wash of grief. Grief, not -- not rage, or hate, but just... loss, and sorrow. 

He pulled in a slow breath, trying to judge this man's age a little better. "My name's Luke," he said, rather than babble questions that might be the product of an overactive imagination and the stress of the last Endorian day, "not sir. Yours, if you don't mind my asking?" 

The elder man hissed on his intake of breath, hearing a different voice, seeing a different time, and that question. "Rex, sss… Luke. Skywalker." He looked at the boy, those light eyes old before his time //just like the General// and shook his head. "I shouldn't keep you." He wanted to go out into the woods, wait for the party to die down. Morning, he could find his answers… and his eyes drifted up again to the fading remnants of the Death Star's destruction.

"I'm not really feeling up to the party," Luke admitted quietly, and then determination and focus flowed across his mind. He followed Rex's eyes up, to where the last of the explosion was still visible past the celebratory fireworks, and asked softly, "What do you want to know, Rex?" 

Rex gave a snort. "Never did get used to that," he muttered, even as the words rang in almost the right cadence. Not quite enough impatience, but maybe right after a mission, when the adrenaline was wearing off. "The lightsaber, the name… is it the real deal, or are you a Public Relations stunt? 

"Because if you are, that didn't work so well for the man I remember," he said bluntly.

Luke had to take a step sideways, catch himself on the nearest tree, losing his breath. This man -- Rex -- _would_ be old enough to have fought in the Clone Wars, to have... to have kno -- to have known his father. "You -- you knew my father? Anakin Skywalker?" 

To have someone _alive_ to talk to, someone that had known him -- he felt an almost savage surge of hope. 

Rex stared at the kid, eyes going wide. The General's own kid… ahh, kriff. Ahsoka had to have been right then, and that meant the kid might as well be an orphan. "I knew the man he _was_ ," he said gruffly. He couldn't help all the bitterness, knew it set him apart from most of the old-timers. They all thought Anakin Skywalker died in the Purge, because of Order 66. That Commander Appo and the 501st had done to him as … as every other unit had done to their generals and commanders. His eyes shut violently, his hand clenching in a fist, trying not to think about Cody and Kenobi.

For a moment, Rex looked completely stunned, and then he spoke. Bitterness, agony, fury... and that black, blazing grief again, almost a storm against his mind, and Luke had to take a shaking breath, then another. There was something else, too, something he couldn't understand, but the emotions were plain. Plain, and explained so much -- even as it raised a million questions for him. 

"...you knew the man he was," Luke said, very softly, "but you -- know what he became, too. Somehow... you know." 

The choked sound that escaped Rex was one he didn't think he would ever make again, not after Ahsoka failed to come back to him. He'd given up caring about anything but getting the job done in their memories.

"How could I not know? Me? His --" Rex snapped his jaws shut around the words. "Sir, is the Alliance going after him next? Because taking out that piece of bantha fodder isn't going to be worth a single sabaac hand, unless we keep Vader from taking the reins!" He said it with all his passion, so he didn't have to think about _Anakin_.

'His -- ' 

His what? 

Luke wanted so badly to ask, but knew he couldn't, knew now wasn't the time. All of that determination swelled again, swelled and crystallized, and he found the fury directed at the dead Emperor more than a little satisfying even as he tried to figure out how to answer without breaking this man. This man who had obviously suffered so much. "The Alliance doesn't have to worry about Darth Vader," he answered, quietly, adding, "Come with me, Rex," as he turned around to go back to his father's pyre. 

Rex found himself obeying, steeling his soul against whatever Skywalker was leading him to… just like in the past. He was silent, fighting the memories, trying to keep in the present. How many brothers had he lost by this point? How many kids, like Ezra, had there been, forced to grow up too fast, or die? And how many of them had died anyway?

And then he could see what he was being led to, could see that hated mask in the flames, starting to give way to the heat and curl on itself. The fury at Vader, at the Empire, at the Emperor himself gave way to nothing but the aching loss for Anakin, for his general, and he sank to his knees in front of the pyre. 

"Ni su'cuyi, gar kyr'adyc, ni partayli, gar darasuum, Anakin Skywalker," Rex said, softly below the crackle of the fire.

Luke couldn't quite hear the words... but he did hear his father's name, faintly, from the man kneeling at his father's pyre. He hadn't had any words, hadn't had anything but the grief closing his throat. At least someone did, and it was someone that had loved his father. Loved him, hated him, and now grieved him again. Again, or anew. He took a few steps backward, finding a tree to lean his aching body against, and closed his eyes, giving Rex what little privacy he could while still standing right here. 

He had time. 

Rex took his time, said the words again, and began the list of those dead that had mattered to Anakin and himself. 

Luke faintly heard 'Obi-Wan Kenobi' in that litany of names, a long list with a lot of one word names that sounded like soldier call-signs. When Rex ended the list on an 'Ahsoka Tano', he pushed to his feet, stood straight as any regulation soldier, and saluted the pyre before turning his back on the enemy that was finally dead, having released the soul of his warrior-brother and commanding officer first.

He looked directly at Luke, and drew in a deep breath. "Don't fall prey to hero role, Skywalker. It's a fast Fall from there, when the whole Galaxy is needing you to be stronger than possible."

Luke had opened his eyes when he moved, and that rigid attention, the stiff, sharp salute and about-face whispered to him. That was important, that was _very_ important -- and then Rex was speaking, and he shook his head slightly. "I think I'm growing out of wanting to be a hero," he answered, quiet. 

"You loved my father. Do you -- want to know how he died?" 

"Not without a lot of alcohol and a softer place to sit than a kriffing tree stump, kid," Rex admitted, feeling pity for this boy. "Probably can tell you more about how he lived than you're ever going to hear from others, at least for the years I knew him."

Luke had to laugh, and winced as that yanked at his ribs, arm pressing in over them, and he nodded. "I can understand _that_ ," he agreed with the first, before those last words really registered, and he felt his eyes fix on Rex, hope beating wild in his chest. 

"I -- thank you. I'd -- I'd like that a lot." 

"C'mon then, kid. I know they've got the jawa juice out by now," Rex offered, reaching out on instinct as he got close, offering his shoulders to lean on.

It was a Skywalker, and that mattered more than Rex cared to admit.

Luke let this man -- a stranger, though he couldn't be for long, not with the way he felt -- offer him that shoulder. "I've got to go let Leia see I'm all right," he said, once they were nearly to a gangway, "but after that... yeah. Though the Ewoks make a pretty potent drink themselves, too." 

Rex snorted. "Should have figured. You Jedi and politicians," he said with an amused sound in his voice, despite the roughness of his grief on Luke's senses. "There was the Duchess for one, and then of course the Senator who'd been a Queen for _him_ , not that either of our generals ever said as much."

"What?" Luke blinked, turning his head towards the other man, cocking his head slightly, the 'either of our generals' making his head shake a little more. "I don't -- " something about the tone, though, and Rex's grief for his father -- "no, it's not like that -- she... she's my twin sister. We only found out a few days ago." 

Rex paused their forward motion, taking a wide-eyed view of Luke. "Wonder who managed to fool the entire Republic… well, Empire by then… that she died without giving birth? Not that many had known she was pregnant, but the state funeral made it pretty clear." He shook his head sadly. "Shame. She would have been a kind mother, the way she treated all of us." 

His head snapped around, his gaze riveted to Rex, to the kindled flame of hope deep in his chest. He'd been happy just to hear that there was a chance to hear about their father. Their mother, too? "Our mother? You knew our _Mother_ , know who she was? I -- who wa -- no, no. Never mind, not now.

"Just please, please, don't die on me -- us -- before you can tell us." 

Rex gave a snort, even as he moved to help the kid up onto the gangways. "All the droids in the Separatist armies couldn't kill me, all the shinies for the Empire… like kriffing hell I'm going to give up on you now, Skywalker." He half-shrugged. "Got to make sure you live up the man he was, to the woman she never stopped being."

+++ 

Rex had seen the pair of droids greet Luke once the boy left the princess. That made him curious about the pair, because droids didn't usually change hands without losing their memories. He'd finagled an entire skin of something being advertised as wine that was about as potent as jawa juice. He'd also commandeered a set of cushions just out of the fires' rings, but where he could keep watching things.

It almost felt normal. He had to force down an instinctive reaction when one of the younger pilots with a high voice went past him, teasing her friends.

His ghosts were too close tonight.

He knew the boy would find him, and they would talk until the booze or fatigue finally won. Maybe it would help one or both of them. Maybe it would just make new holes. Rex wouldn't know until they talked it out.

+++

Luke had gotten pulled into talking to Han for a moment, Lando had wrapped him in an enthusiastic, flushed embrace for a moment, Chewie had almost squeezed his ribs into snapping... and the sheer relief of seeing Wedge alive, safe, when he'd taken on both Death Stars now had meant that he'd grabbed onto his friend and not let go for a while. 

But he needed to find Rex again. 

He closed his eyes, listened to the world around him, and followed the quiet ache to a spot barely half-lit, where Rex's camouflage and his black clothes would probably keep anyone from seeing them for the entire rest of the night, and sank down on the open cushion, silently holding a tin cup across for some of whatever Rex had managed to pick up. 

"This is familiar," Rex said, sighing softly. "Once we'd been in the field long enough to relax some of the regulations… and your father had rubbed off on us. He didn't do regulation." He filled Luke's cup, topped his own off, and then looked at the boy beside him. "You're what, twenty-four, five?" he asked.

"Almost twenty-four... well, I think, anyway," Luke shrugged slightly, bringing the drink to his lips to take a few slow swallows. "We always celebrated the day Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru got me, more than my real birthday. 

"He 'didn't do regulation', huh?" That seemed strange, with Vader's obsession with order and control, but... maybe that was another difference between them. 

"Issued orders that usually depended on him and Tano doing something completely inadvisable, to be honest," Rex told him. "But I can tell you those stories later. I… I need to hear what happened. Did he… did he find himself before the end?" he managed to ask, needing to know that more than anything else.

Luke shifted a little, putting the cup down carefully, and looked at Rex, that mingled hope and pain sliding slow and almost sweet into his chest, his heart, as he nodded. That there was someone else that had believed there was still good in his father, had hoped for the same thing he had... "He did, Rex... he did. Anakin Skywalker died saving his son from the Emperor's torture." 

"Thank the Force for that, and the mercy of death to save him from the past," Rex said softly, closing his eyes against his emotions. No, his General deserved mercy, not to be hounded by the ghosts. _His_ ghosts were long gone, and were one with the Force, if he had understood it all correctly when General Kenobi started spouting religion or philosophy or whatever the Jedi way truly was. 

"Sorry, Luke… I can guess you would have liked to get to know at least one of your parents, but there would only have been pain in living for him."

Luke picked the cup up again and took a long drink, turning those words over slowly. "It -- I would have. But he... he was at peace with dying, no matter how much I wanted to save him." He laughed, rough and choked. "H-he said I already had."

Rex's breath caught and he had to take a deep swallow of the drink in his cup. "That's my general," he said after a long moment. "That's Anakin Skywalker. Because like kriff he ever would have done any of that! Any of it! Without it having been as messed up in his head as those of us that still had the chips when the Order went live! He gave himself for you, just as he ever would have, for any of us men."

There was so much in those words that he didn't understand. 'Still had the chips', and 'when the Order' -- he could hear the capitalization there -- 'went live'. 

But he didn't have to understand the details to hear the ferocious, almost savage love and protective rage underneath of that agonized and exultant relief, and to feel it sink in under his skin. Rex had _known_ his father, had served under him in the Clone Wars, and said that what he had done on the Death Star fit into the pattern of Anakin Skywalker's life. 

He'd had to believe there was still good in his father, had needed to believe that Ben wouldn't have spoken of him so warmly and gently if he hadn't been a good man once... and it was even easier to believe it, hearing this man. 

"I... thank you," he murmured, soft. "It -- after the last time we fought, I wasn't sure if I was just delusional.... but I had to try to reach him. Thank the Force, it worked. 

"I could have done without the couple minutes of -- whatever that kriffing lightning was -- but... he pulled it into himself, before he managed to throw the Emperor into the reactor."

Rex shuddered. "Force Lightning. Sith-only power… though Master Plo had a trick similar to it, that didn't warp him," he said. "Saw Darth Tyranus use it." He shook his head. "General Kenobi said to use it reworked your whole brain, making you wide open to the Dark Side.

"General Skywalker … he always _cared_. General Kenobi said he cared too strongly… and that was like painting white stripes on our armor, given the levels Kenobi'd go to," Rex told Luke. "I am so glad… no, overjoyed… to hear my General got to be the end of that kriffing piece of bantha poodoo. It's only fair, much as I can see, from this side of history, how much of those missions were designed to push my General closer to the Fall."

Luke blinked, startled. Yeah, he'd heard the holo of Leia say 'General Kenobi', that once, but he'd honestly mostly forgotten about it. He tucked away the idea that Rex had known several Jedi, known other Masters... maybe Rex could answer some of his thousands of questions. That his father had cared, had been the kind of man that would give himself for his men... that made Vader make even less sense, but made him prouder of his father. 

"I think that might be an insult to the poodoo," he said, "and banthas aren't so bad, really. That cackling monstrosity was more like... rancor shit. 

"'General Kenobi', you said... I only really knew him as 'Crazy Old Ben', the hermit in the Judtland Wastes. You knew him, too?" 

Rex chuckled. "More often than not, kid, the 212th and the 501st tackled the real messes together," he said. "Made for a tight rapport between them and us, and we treated all three Jedi as 'ours' more often than not." Rex topped up his cup and took another swallow. "Cody -- " and he raised his cup in absent toast to the friend he'd lost to the Order -- "would patiently explain that while General Kenobi was more orthodox in his crazy, that only made it worse than General Skywalker and Commander Tano's outright recklessness."

'The 501st' -- he did know _that_ phrase, but only as the number of the stormtrooper legion that the Alliance called 'Vader's Fist', and feared -- had feared -- more than almost any other. Somehow, he was fairly certain that he'd get a fist in the teeth if he said 'Vader's Fist' aloud to this man. 

Then he blinked, shaking his head. " _Three_ Jedi? I'm sorry, I don't know that other name, Tano, at all. Or Cody." 

"Tano… Ahsoka Tano… you may have heard the name 'Fulcrum', in the Rebellion?" Rex closed his eyes, then threw back the rest of his cup. "She was his apprentice, my Commander because of how Jedi were ranked. Wet-behind-the-ears when she came to us on Christophsis, full of spunk, and Skywalker spitting mad over being ordered to take her on. But she was one of us so fast that we sometimes forgot she was just a kid, watched her grow up way too fast, right up until the Jedi Order betrayed her.

"She left them, which meant leaving us and him, but it meant she survived. Up 'til a few years back… almost ten years now, I think? I lose track."

Leia might know that name, probably did, but it didn't really matter if he did or not. He listened, startled at the idea of his father having had a student. Wet-behind-the-ears... well, that had been him at Yavin, even though there wasn't that much water to spare on Tatooine. Everyone started out that way. 

'Ordered to take her on'? But... why? And what did he mean, 'just a kid'? How young had she really been, or was that like Han calling _him_ kid all the time? 

"...the Order betrayed her?" he asked, carefully, swallowing against a sudden surge of half-fear, half-nausea, and didn't protest. Rex would tell him, or not, and then he would see if he could get Ben to answer him again. 

Rex refilled his cup, again, considering that. Some ways, it was easier to talk about her. Leave Cody for a day when he could finally get someone to listen about how the clones had been abused. But in others… Ahsoka had been _his_ as much as Anakin's, when it came to teaching her.

"A plot against the Temple," he finally said, his voice gone rough. "She was held responsible, put on trial, and found guilty. Only Skywalker pressing the truly guilty person to confess saved her, but the damage was done.

"Even the man she saw as nearly a father had believed in her guilt, and though they apologized, she left the Order, rather than go back. Can't blame her, either; sometimes think us having seen that made it too damn easy for what the 501st did later," he said, with that last in a harsh whisper. "Not as any of my brothers had a kriffing choice, mind you!"

Luke didn't say anything right away, draining his cup in a series of long swallows -- which had a burn starting behind his ears -- as a dark horror crawled up his spine. How could the Jedi have thought, believed, that someone innocent had been guilty? Why would they? ...had Master Yoda been there, for that? Had -- had Ben? 

...at least his father had fought for his student, he decided, still holding his tongue. Had believed in her. "I don't think I would have gone back, either," he said, that harsh whisper telling him there was something horrific in that 'what the 501st did later'. 

"I don't really know anything about the Clone Wars," he admitted, quiet. "Tatooine doesn't exactly have a great school system -- or one at all, really -- and I think my uncle was afraid of me getting crazy ideas. I've been trying to learn, but so much is restricted or erased or just... reeks of Imperial propaganda, that I haven't gotten much of anywhere." 

"Kid, I'm not sure the Alliance even knows the history, given how fast the Empire shut everything down and took control of all information," Rex said with a sigh. "I met up with Tano years later, when she was pulling her time with the Rebellion. Last mission she went on… Vader was there. What actually happened? The survivors couldn't actually tell me much. She shoved them out to escape and stayed to face him.

"Stupid, reckless, brave idiot," he said as a benediction of its own sort for the girl that had stolen his heart.

"...funny, I've had all of those thrown at me a couple of times," Luke replied, while something twisted, deep in his chest, at the idea of someone Anakin had fought for having to face down Vader. Who... didn't leave many people alive in his wake. "Sounds like I would have liked her. 

"As to the history... you're probably right." 

"You're a Skywalker," Rex said, chuckling. "Can't be one of those without being stupid, reckless, and brave. Now, if you were an Amidala, or whatever her family name on her planet was, you'd be wise, kind, and still reckless."

Luke filed that name away, then realized his head was feeling far fuzzier than it ought to. At least... until he recalled how long ago his last meal and last sleep were.

"Go ahead and sack out, Gen… Commander Skywalker. I'm not going anywhere, and despite how old I might look, I promise; I can run circles around half your rookies here." He hated that the kid had already seen enough loss to warrant that kind of reassurance, but it was there.

"Leia has to meet you," Luke mumbled, before weighing the desire to sleep here and now against having some dignity. Rex must have caught the confusion, and suddenly was on his feet, helping Luke up, and guiding him to one of the lodge houses set up with sleeping mats. The old clone got the Jedi Knight laid out, covered, and then retrieved his wine and headed for where he'd already pitched a tent. It was time to drink the ghosts away… again.

And -- for once -- to toast the freedom of a tortured soul.

**Author's Note:**

> Ni su'cuyi, gar kyr'adyc, ni partayli, gar darasuum - "I'm still alive, but you are dead. I remember you, so you are eternal"—Daily remembrance of those passed on, followed by the names of those being remembered (Wookiepedia)


End file.
